There’s no question that the animal-rights movement has successfully altered America’s attitude toward fur; coats composed of pelts are no longer a de rigueur status symbol for those with too much money on their hands. So why, then, is mink production ramping up to virtually unprecedented levels? Because the newly affluent Chinese covet fur coats […]
Microkhan Jr. has reached the age at which he’s starting to ask about food taboos—like, why we eat pigs but not horses (a recent dinnertime inquiry). In straining to explain the nuances of societal dietary preferences, I thought of this incredible photo essay on the rat catchers of Mozambique, who provide that nation’s blue-collar workers […]
It is a good time to be a squirrel in the United States. For starters, the bushy-tailed rodents are no longer coveted by hunters, to the great distress of many aging sportsmen. The latest numbers out of Pennsylvania don’t lie: The wider availability of squirrel species has not been enough to buoy squirrel hunting participation. […]
Ever since reading Robert Sullivan’s Rats, I’ve become convinced that the furry little banes of urban sanitation will someday rule the world. They are like land-dwelling versions of the dreaded zebra mussel, adept at turning a minor incursion into a full-blown invasion before any Homo sapiens are the wiser. And once they’ve conquered a piece […]
Back in March, we brought you news of mankind’s triumph over the rodent denizens of Rat Island, Alaska. Now comes word that many thousands of miles to the south, a veritable Cat Island (aka Wake Atoll) has been similarly scourged of its furry invaders (PDF): At the end of the second week in July, we […]
Tags:animals·cats·rats·rodents·Wake Atoll·wildlife management
About a dozen years ago, there was a minor to-do in Kentucky over the health hazards of burgoo—specifically the possibility that the consumption of squirrel brains could lead to some variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The state’s government thus engaged in a pointed campaign to discourage the consumption of roadkilled squirrels, the brains of which are […]
Look, we’re big enough Mongolian monarchs to admit when we’ve goofed. And that’s exactly what appears to be the case with last week’s Bad Movie Friday post about the 1982 Marc Singer vehicle The Beastmaster. We riffed about Singer’s apparent refusal to save the life of the ferret that had just helped pluck him from […]
Tags:animals·Bad Movie Friday·errata·ferrets·Marc Singer·movies·rodents·The Beastmaster·TV
Whatever you may be drinking this weekend, please plan on pouring a little out for the heroic ferret in this classic The Beastmaster clip. We have no idea why Marc Singer’s character, supposedly a Dr. Doolittle-like friend to the animals, doesn’t try and help his rodent savior. But that’s just one of the many eternal […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·ferrets·Marc Singer·movies·rodents·The Beastmaster
We’ll admit, we were deeply skeptical of plans to rid Alaska’s Rat Island of its marauding rodents. But the airdropped brodifacoum actually seems to have done the trick. Execs at Club Med are surely licking their chops.
One of Microkhan’s most faithful correspondents wrote in yesterday regarding our recent Taiwanese landmines post. Our piece quoted from a report on Mozambique’s mine removal program, which suggested that dogs were doing much of the detection. But our reader, who obviously knows Mozambique better than the Average Joe, points out that giant pouched rats are […]
Tags:animals·Black Death·coal mining·landmines·Mozambique·rodents·weapons
